Amtrak engineer allegedly has no memory of crash

Brandon Bostian, the engineer of the Amtrak train that derailed Tuesday evening, allegedly has “absolutely no recollection” of the accident.

“He remembers driving the train, he remembers going to that area generally, has absolutely no recollection of the incident or anything unusual,” said Robert Goggin, an attorney for the engineer, in an interview with CBS.

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On Thursday, an eighth fatality from Amtrak Train 188’s derailment in Philadelphia was reported. The crash also resulted in hundreds of injuries, including for Bostian, who suffered a concussion, leg injuries and a significant head wound that required 14 staples.

Robert Sumwalt, a National Transportation Safety Board member, said his investigators have not yet interviewed the engineer, but such a memory lapse is not unusual.

“[F]or somebody who’s been through a traumatic event, this is not at all unusual for human behavior to have the mind blank out things like that, at least for the short term,” he told CBS.

At a news conference Wednesday evening, Sumwalt said the train was traveling at approximately 106 miles per hour when it entered the curve where it derailed. The speed limit for the curve is 50 mph, and Sumwalt said that the train’s recorder’s last reading clocked it at 102 miles per hour before the crash.

The engineer’s mental status at the time of the crash, a subject still being investigated, has led to calls from political leaders, including Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton , for Amtrak to hold off on adding new shifts for its employees.

“While we do not know the causes of Tuesday night’s tragic Amtrak derailment, it is a warning that rail workers should not be overscheduled and overburdened at the expense of public safety,” Norton, who serves as ranking member of the House’s Transportation Subcommittee on Highway and Transit, wrote in a statement.

The Washington, D.C. Democrat referred in her statement to a letter she wrote last year to Amtrak, raising concerns over proposed mandatory 12-hour shifts for train and engine service employees operating out of Union Station.

In the news conference Wednesday, Sumwalt said definitively that if Amtrak had installed so-called positive train control technology, which already exists on some Amtrak routes, at the site of the crash, “this accident would not have occurred.”

Dec. 31 is the deadline that Congress set in 2008 for all railroads to install the technology, but lawmakers have been moving to extend that requirement by three to five years amid complaints by the industry and some lawmakers that the timeline is unrealistic. The Senate Commerce Committee voted in March for a bill that would reset the deadline to 2020.

Amtrak’s CEO Joseph Boardman said in a press conference Thursday that the train service is “very close” to completing the installation of positive train control across the Northeastern corridor, and that it will be installed fully by the end of the year.

Boardman defended Amtrak’s PTC record, saying it has been getting ready for the technology for some time and has spent $111 million on it so far.

“We had to change a lot of things on the corridor to make it work and we’re very close to being able to cut it in,” Boardman said. “We need some testing done on interference with the 220mhz radios we’re dealing with, but we will complete this by the end of the year. I believe we will probably be the only railroad in the United States [with PTC] … and I think that has not been reported well, frankly. We have delivered a leadership role on PTC in the United States.”

Boardman also told reporters that it is possible Amtrak service will be restored between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia by Monday, though Tuesday is more probable.

“It takes concrete some time to set, and that’s where we are in terms of timing,” he said.

Earlier Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee voted against an amendment, supported by Democratic members, that would have provided more than $800 million to install positive train control.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) defended the committee’s decision in an interview on Fox News, saying, “We need to find out what went wrong with Amtrak before jumping to conclusions” and trying to double spending on government programs.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) added Thursday morning that it’s “stupid” to question whether cuts to Amtrak’s funding were responsible for the crash.